


Is This What You Wanted?

by Nellsie



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: F/F, Femslash, Romance, because olive is an angsty lady, i wanted to write a thing about olive, not slow burn but like... moderate burn, so i did, some angst sprinkled in there
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-02
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-07-19 16:33:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7369300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nellsie/pseuds/Nellsie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some moments between Leliana and Olive. Well, a lot of them, actually. A lot of the moments.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Un

**Author's Note:**

> So I decided to write a multi-chapter fic about my perpetually angry Tabris and her cute girlfriend.
> 
> I've been having really bad writer's block lately so this is the product of that. Also, side note, I always picture Olive with really curly, unruly red hair and the game doesn't allow me to have that so guess what description you're gonna be getting? Mine. The one with the curly hair. Because writing.

Olive pauses when talking to the Chantry sister. Mostly because the girl - Leliana - has claimed that she’s heard the Maker tell her to help the Grey Wardens.

She’s a tall, human girl. Short red hair - almost the same color as Olive's, but lighter - hangs down to her chin, and well… she’s _covered_ in blood, which stains her Chantry robe. Mostly because she - along with the other two _shems_ Olive is traveling with - has helped to defend her against Loghain’s men.

Olive glances over the girl, and usually, being a sensible, city elf, when a human starts spouting off nonsense, you walk away slowly and try not to grab more of their attention. However, Olive is a grey warden now… what’s the worst this girl could do?

“So, I take it this is the part where I back away slowly, then?” Olive asks, mostly sarcastically, and Leliana shakes her head, sighing. Olive crosses her arms, as she usually does when her patience is being tested. “Can you elaborate, then?”

“I… I know that sounds… absolutely insane, but it’s true! I had a dream… a vision!” The girl has a stutter in the beginning, but it quickly changes into some sense of boldness as she defends her statement. Olive raises an eyebrow.

“More crazy? I thought we were all full up.” Alistair comments, and Olive shrugs, before glancing back at Leliana.

“Look at the people here. They are lost in their despair, and this darkness, this chaos… will spread. The Maker doesn’t want this.” Leliana says, “What you do, what you are _meant_ to do, is the Maker’s work. Let me help.”

Olive respects the Chantry, despite all the shit that it gives, at times. She believes in the Maker, and she wasn’t quite looking for a Maker-centric speech today. It’s been a long, long day.

And, in addition, she doesn’t like being _told_ what to do in the slightest. She likes telling people what to do, and going against what people tell her to do.

Still, Olive’s brown eyes wander to the daggers still held in Leliana’s grip. How - in this desperate, _obnoxious_ position that she is in - she really should not turn down a skilled fighter when it’s handed to her by _the Maker,_ or whatever.

She shrugs as she uncrosses her arms, “I won’t turn down help when it’s offered just… don’t make a nuisance out of yourself. All right, shem?”

Olive gives the shem treatment to almost every human she meets, because, more often than not, she wants them to know that she is _not_ someone who will worship the ground they walk on purely because they lack pointed ears. She is hostile, she is a city elf.

“Perhaps your skull was cracked worse than mother thought.” Morrigan comments, and Olive thinks that, perhaps it was. She’s traveling with three humans on an impossible journey to somehow do all the grey warden work themselves. So, perhaps.

“Thank you, I appreciate being given this chance. I will _not_ let you down.” She says, and Olive replies with a one word answer.

_“Don’t.”_

* * *

 

Olive doesn’t say much when they’re walking around Lothering, doing tasks for the citizens who all seem very keen on either running away or shaking in fear because - according to most of them - death is surely coming for them.

Leliana helps save a qunari - Sten - by convincing the revered mother to hand over a key to his cage. Olive convinces the woman that she doesn’t have enough coin to spare for the Chantry, and she doesn’t. She started off with little to her name and looting sovereigns from corpses isn’t the best way to make a significant amount of coin.

Olive sits beside Morrigan as they pour flasks. Olive makes poisons, (with the instructive help of Leliana, who stands beside her and tells her what to mix together. She's useful. So far) and Morrigan - somewhat ironically, considering the witch has proven to be almost as poisonous as Olive, so far - pours three flasks full of health poultices.

When they finish with their tasks, they hand over the flasks - Olive hands the venom over to the man at the tavern, and the poultices over to a Chantry sister (or a mother. What’s the difference, really?) tending to the sick. Both give her coin in exchange - and Olive leads them to camp.

She is tired, and suddenly, now that she isn’t walking for hours on end and constantly _doing_ something, she realizes just how tired she is. She collapses in her tent and closes her eyes, and she’s intent on sleeping, mostly.

Then she remembers the battle, and how everyone - everyone that could have helped them on this _stupid, hopeless_ mission - is gone. How the king is dead, and now the traitor has gotten the country to turn on them. How, if she survives this (and she doesn’t _really_ think she’ll survive this) Olive doesn’t even know if she can go home.

She has a nightmare about the archdemon, and hordes of darkspawn. The next morning, Alistair tells her that - somehow - this is normal, and it’s another part of being a fucking _Grey Warden._

She realizes then, just how terrifying this all is.

 


	2. Deux

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "What about your fruit? Is it forbidden?"

Despite it all, Olive does… sort of, talk to them, over a few days. Short conversations, with long spaces of silence in between questions that she thinks of.

Alistair is okay. He jokes, and Olive has never had a sparkling sense of humor, but she finds him sort of charming and amusing at times. For a human, that is.

Yes, for a human. She has to remind herself of that, some days. She values her conversations with Sten because of that. He is neither human, nor is he incredibly boring or unpleasant. Their conversations mostly consist of long periods of silence and some sarcasm on both of their parts.

Morrigan is… complicated. Olive isn’t really making a good impression, despite the traits that she feels they might share. The magic thing is a factor - Olive has learned to be fearful of things like it, people like Morrigan, since she was a child - but she’s… trying to change that, if only to make things on this impossible journey a little more tolerable.

The dog is good. He’s the only companion that Olive can say she _loves_ without any shadow of a doubt. He’s the only one who doesn’t speak.

Leliana is… well, they don’t hate each other. In fact, Olive is learning Leliana is an easy woman to speak to. Mostly because she rambles, and Olive is content standing and listening, and not speaking. Well, mostly listening. Olive's mind wanders. Sometimes.

At the moment, Olive listens as Leliana explains how there are lots of beautiful, charming women in the Chantry. Olive wonders how a simple (flirty) statement now has her hearing about this, but then Leliana mentions something about how fruit is sweeter when it’s forbidden and Olive can’t hold her tongue when it comes down to it.

“What about your fruit? Is it forbidden?” She asks, in what she would consider a dull, joking tone. Then she realizes that, to anyone who didn’t know that her sense of humor was _shit,_ it probably sounded like a very brazen flirtation. Probably. Oh, well.

Leliana blushes, and stutters, and asks why she’s having this conversation, before explaining that, no, her ‘fruit’ isn’t forbidden. She hasn’t taken vows.

“Cool.” Olive says, deadpan. As satisfying as it is to see Leliana blush, and as unembarrassed as Olive is about the whole thing - about flirting in general - she imagines that Leliana crosses the line a bit. She’s a Chantry sister, and a human and -

Leliana wouldn’t be a good fit with Olive. Probably.

Olive walks away after asking a few more questions, trying to derail the conversation, that whole thing. There is no harm in flirting, she knows that. She’s brash and loud enough that saying it doesn’t bother her in the least. It’s probably because she didn’t _mean_ to flirt that she’s even bothering to think about it.

Leliana is pretty, and she seems… _nice,_ for a human.

(For a human, because humans do awful, shitty things. They do things like ruin weddings and hurt Shianni. They do things like that, and when they receive their comeuppance, they act as if they've always been on the high ground, because for _once_ the elves didn’t sit back and let injustices befall them without consequences.

They do things like that, and Olive is an elf, and she’s always had to deal with it. She won’t let herself forget it, either.)

Olive is rough around the edges, and her words are often sharp, and insulting. Or they’re covered up in a - usually successful - attempt to lie to someone or persuade them to do something.

Leliana’s words are said in a soft voice, and they’re flowery and coated in sweetness and all those things that Olive can replicate, but never really mean. Leliana can tell stories and explain the lives of countless characters and people, and others will listen.

But Olive is not that. She couldn’t be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the good thing about origins is that i can honestly pretend the warden means everything sarcastically and everyone takes them really really seriously.  
> also when i wrote this i was really, really tired. it probably shows


End file.
